Stars Turning High
by Spacemin Spiff
Summary: In which, on another possible Lost Light, Whirl and Rung accidentally become a couple. (AU: Rung is not Whirl's therapist)
1. Chapter 1

((A/N: Whirl has violent command hallucinations (similar to intrusive thoughts/impulses) in this fic, which are presented in second person as in "you should do this." If commands are triggering for you please proceed with caution. This fic will also contain suicidal ideation, mentions of past suicide attempts, and mentions of past medical abuse.))

* * *

When Whirl had come out of recharge at the start of the week, he had fully expected to be floating around around in the Allspark by now.

He had never been big on religion, but he had hoped that- whatever the next plane of existence looked like- he would be able to pick fights with Dai Atlas, or at least beat the scrap out of Killmaster a second time. But then tall purple and ghoulish had had to come in and ruin everything. And then the mecha hadn't even cared that he'd ruined everything, which was even worse, and Whirl had had no choice but to defend his honor.

Waking up in the Lost Light's Medbay was... disappointing. And, since Whirl was in the habit of uniformly consolidating all negative emotions into molten frothing rage, that disappointment found a throat and began to squeeze. He was hoping that the first neck he found would belong to his peeping tom, but the frame writhing in his grip was quite distinctly orange, not purple. Disappointing. [[kill them pop their helm off their spine twist them apart]] He eased up his grip, but didn't drop the mecha completely. If he looked like he was intent on killing someone Ratchet might call for a security drone to take him down. Getting his helm shot off by a drone was a lousy offlining compared to the one he'd arranged for that morning, but at that moment he felt desperate enough to deem it an acceptable substitute.

His suicide-by-drone backup plan was thwarted, however, when Ratchet started shouting something about him going back to jail. Whirl didn't want to go back to jail. You couldn't offline your way out of jail. He had tried, back at Garrus-1. Some of his fellow prisoners had even been generous enough to help beat him halfway to oblivion. It hadn't worked. Whirl wondered, bitterly, who a mecha had to kill to get their spark snuffed out in this joint. Apparently, not the one he was currently throttling. Whoever he was squeezing wasn't even important enough to call a security drone in for. He let the mecha drop to the floor.

You try to do the universe a favor and it lands you on a junker full of D-listers.

Whirl found himself being just operational enough to haul himself out of the Medbay. That was good enough for him, which was good enough for Ratchet. Or at least, he didn't try to stop him. Probably knew better than to waste his time. He dragged himself haphazardly down the hallways at an uneven pace, smearing fuel and paint against the walls. His adrenaline was running out and his resolve had been severely dampened, but if he wandered far and wide enough he would inevitably meet someone who hated him enough to try to offline him. There were not many Cybertroniansleft in the galaxy, and Whirl held the dubious honor of being almost equally loathed by his allies and enemies. If he wandered far enough, if the warnings stopped blocking his vision, if he knew the way to an airlock, if he, if he-

He didn't, and Ultra Fragnus found him. Which was great. Which he loved. Nothing better than meeting an old Wreckers pal who you'd last seen when he was called in to beat you out of a tantrum. A tantrum which he'd been throwing because Springer was too good for some awful half death, some protracted imprisonment, from rusting on a medical slab, because Springer would have stopped Impactor. Because no matter how many times he tried to explain, Roadbuster wouldn't understand.

Magnus didn't want him on the crew. Me and you both, buddy, he thought.

"Listen, Fragnus," he snapped in the middle of the enforcer's spiel about proper channels and security measures and beep boop bleep.

"That is not my designation," he responded, predictably derailed by the blatant show of disrespect.

"Uncle Fragnus?"

"Whirl, state your intent." Magnus was clearly not in the mood to play around.

"What I want is to get off this wreck," he stomped his pede on the floor for emphasis. "Drop me off back on Cybertron and I'll be out of your field forever."

"I'm afraid that is not possible," Ultra Magnus exvented. Whirl could tell, even through the stern faceplate, how sincerely he wished it was possible. "The engines have been damaged, and our location is currently unknown."

"Unknown? Mags, tell me you're shoving dross down my intake."

"I am most certainly not."

Whirl let out an extended burst of static frustration, turned and slammed his helm against the wall hard enough to jostle his optic in its bell. "Great."

"You have two choices, Whirl. Either I take you down to the brig and you stay there for the duration, or you agree to my terms and are grantedtentative parole." Whirl slammed his helm again; this time his optic cracked.

"...What terms," he eventually hissed, pained like a punctured actuator.

"You will promise to me that you will not make trouble," he began, in his customarily stern and booming serious voice. Whirl muttered something about trying, which seemed to satisfy him. "You will be placed with a member of the ethics committee to insure your behavior meets the standards of the Autobot code." Whirl gurgled, hoping the noise would sufficiently convey the depths of his resigned disgust. It apparently did, because Magnus moved on. "Finally, you will be required to see an on-board counselor for weekly session." Whirl turned his helm from where it had been resting against the wall, fixed Magnus with a wide, glowing glare.

"Can't wait," he sang. "I've been told my bad attitude comes from having a tiny port. I mean, anyone who's seen my port would know that was slag, but if you give me a cute one I might let 'em take a peek under my canopy."

Ultra Magnus did not rise to his bait, a sure sign that whatever was going on with the ship was, in fact, severely taxing him.

"Someone will be assigned to you." His tone was cold. "Now, let us move on."

Magnus took him to Rodimus, who made him do some song and dance about how sorry he was for the whole Cyclonus thing. Was he still not over that? It had happened forever ago. Then Cyclonus promised to kill him, which was so five hours ago. In any case, the more Whirl thought about self-termination by provocation, the more it began to sour on him. Why end his life with yet another mecha getting one up on him? That wasn't very Wrecker of him. Not that he was, technically, at all a Wrecker anymore.

Whirl made a note to talk Cyclonus out of it sometime. Or kill him. Whichever.

The rest of the cycle had lived up to the promise set by its first half, in that it was processor-numbingly boring interspersed with periods of almost enjoyable violence. Rodimus called a meeting to tell the general populace how utterly fragged they all were, and quite rudely failed to address his extremely valuable advice for upping the coolness of their collective mission. While high command yammered, the mech from the ethics board- his assigned roommate, apparently- introduced himself. Whirl resolved to take every opportunity to inconvenience him. As far as he could tell, that was still a permissible way of taking out his anger on innocent bystanders. Lock him out of the suite, pretend to mishear when he wanted something from him, spill some fuel on his stuff on 'accident.' Acceptable hazing. No real harm. No one would have to be stuffed into a regeneration chamber.

Whirl honestly hadn't expected the sparkeater.

It was remarkable just to see with his own optic that Sparkeaters were, in fact, a thing. An ugly thing, not that he was one to judge. He almost got to shoot it, which was not as fun as actually shooting it, but a lot more fun than missing the fiasco entirely. Of course it was Trailbreaker who had to go and ruin the fun with his shiny bubble trick. Whirl had wanted to see what kind of explosion could take out half of a ship, but no one else seemed to share his scientific curiosity. He followed along with the chase for a while, but Rodimus kept shooting down his offers to shoot the sparkeater up. Some dross about safety and survival and his much better plan.

He got tired of the whole thing pretty quickly once it became apparent that nothing was going to go boom any time soon. At least he had tried to avenge his dear departed roommate of all of ten minutes. That had to be worth something, he thought as he wandered away from the engine room and back to his hab suite.

Whirl's suite no longer had a door. Or at least, not one that functioned. In his haste and during all the excitement, he had knocked a Whirl-sized hole in the steel. He didn't like that very much, and stood in front of the entrance muttering oaths to Primus for a good long while. Without the door his suite was too open, too empty and airy. Bars would feel better. [[scrape your optic out of your helm]] In the end, he pried Animus' berth from the floor and dragged it over to block up the hole. He savored the irritating skreel it made as he slid it across the floor. The prospect of bringing that level of discomfort to his neighbors at every start and end of the cycle cheered his spark considerably.

He settled into a defragmentation cycle that his system alerts told him was long overdue.

When Whirl came back online- for the second time finding himself in that Primus-fracked ship instead of the Allspark- he met consciousness with a snort of static and an aching in his joints. He dozed stubbornly until he heard someone announcing that it was the first designated refueling period of the cycle. He rallied to rouse himself, though he'd rather have thrown himself in the Pit than join the rest of the crew around the major dispensers. Even if he had felt keen on socialising, he had the tendency to scrape-off every mecha he graced with his presence, intentionally or otherwise. He had a bad history and a worse reputation to live down, after all. And while a brawl might be fun, it wouldn't be good. Magnus had been pretty clear about the fact that any future outbursts of violence would get him sent straight to the brig. And then, when they figured out while the frag they were, back to prison for the remainder of his functioning. Which was exactly what that whole ballet with the sweeps' corpses was supposed to fix, but either Primus was without mercy or Unicron found his mess of an existence funny, because that hadn't worked out in the least.

Whirl decided not to dwell on his memories of the bunker, the smell of stale and fresh fuel and the cool dry air. Rodimus had given him a map of the ship when he was 'welcomed aboard,' and he brought it up, scanning for a fuel source that was somewhere small and isolated, unlikely to be a social hub. One of the recreation areas looked promising: a small datapad library, equipped with a dispenser and several seats, located by the munitions stores. He queued up directions to the room as he untangled his limbs and slumped gracelessly off of his slab. He stabbed impatiently at the door's operation panel with a talon, his antennae twitching at the buzz of denial it issued, before remembering the makeshift replacement he had installed the previous cycle. Sliding the berth aside would be too much effort. He grabbed it by an edge and tugged it unceremoniously to the ground, while it made a sound loud enough that several mechen in the hall twitched. Funny. He initiated the directions and thought about oblivion.


	2. Chapter 2

((A/N: I made Rung one of a team of psychologists in this AU because, with all due respect to James Roberts, it's patently ridiculous to have a single therapist for a ship of ~200 individuals. In this AU there are a total of five psychiatric professionals onboard. Whirl will be treated by one of them. Rung will be working with the rest of his canon patients.))

* * *

When he arrived at the recreation room it was empty except for a table with three chairs, a cabinet full of datapads, an energon dispenser, and a small orange mecha engrossed in a tablet. The mecha was perched on a chair: hunched over slightly, one hand clenched in a fist in front of their mouth, one pede tapping, field held close to their frame. One mecha. That wasn't so bad. They didn't look much like a threat, which meant fighting them would be boring, which meant the idea hardly rated as a temptation. Good.

Whirl made his way over to the dispenser, input his credit code and collected the first of what would most likely be several cubes. His systems were still nagging him periodically about the dwindling reserves in his tank- he had burned up a lot of fuel beating down Cyclonus, and leaked even more out in the aftermath. He should have let Ratchet patch him up. Not that he would've. He held his cube delicately between the tips of his claws, made another cautious sweep of the room with his optic.

It was hard to tell if the other mecha had even noticed him come in. Their optics were hidden behind a pair of scopes. If they had noticed, the 'bot- Whirl narrowed his optic. Was it a 'bot? He couldn't make out an Autobrand on them, but they didn't have a Decepticon badge either. NAIL? They looked small, high caste, eminently breakable. They were some sort of grounder, maybe a rover? Whatever they were, it wasn't something that would be useful in a warzone. They hadn't so much as glanced up when a hulking empuratee with a thorax full of guns and a field that radiated irritation came into the room. That sure sounded like a NAIL to him.

But they also looked familiar, in a 'haven't I beaten the scrap out of you somewhere' way.

Of course, a lot of mechen looked familiar to Whirl in that kind of way. Pretty much every Genericon looked like that to him. He tilted his helm, cycled his rotors. Oh well. He made his way over to the table, settling his frame into the chair opposite the reading mecha. He stretched his legs over the surface of the slab with a rev of his engines, being sure to scrape his pedes loudly against the steel and then rest them within fieldspace of the other mecha's face. [[kick them]] When they didn't react to his display he dipped his proboscis into the cube and intook a portion of fuel. He knew this mecha. Where would he know some NAIL from, anyway?

"Hey," he nudged the mecha's arm with his pede, winning a mildly perturbed glance in response. "Do I know you from somewhere?" The orange mecha's expression turned to surprise, optic ridges arching, and they let out a burst of laughter.

"Is that a joke?" they asked in a tone that read to Whirl like offense. The rotary bristled, guns clicking to attention and antenna lowering. Yeah, very funny. Of course their type wouldn't associate with him.

"Forget I asked," he growled, sweeping his legs off of the table and moving to rise from his chair. The other mecha made an unparseable expression and lifted their hands in supplication.

"Oh no, you've misunderstood. You tried to kill me yesterday." Whirl paused. He didn't remember that. Not that he doubted it. It sounded like him, to do something like that. It was more of a matter of when and where than if. "In the med bay, when you first woke up," the mecha prompted. "You throttled me quite energetically."

"Oh, yeah." With that mystery solved, Whirl settled back into his seat and turned his attention back to his fuel. Once he'd drained the first cube, he returned to the dispenser and procured his second. It would be a lot easier if he could get multiple cubes at once, but that would require holdingmultiple cubes at once. He might have tried for that, if he were alone, but he wasn't about to risk dropping fuel all over the floor. Stuff like that attracted pity. Whirl didn't like pity. He turned around and was a bit perturbed to find that the other mecha was staring at him.

His plating prickled. He flared it slightly and sauntered back to the table. The mecha had probably just realised who he was. Well, besides 'the 'bot who almost decapitated me.' He thought, half in arrogance and half in practicality, that if this was anything but a colony mecha they shouldrecognise him. He'd been a Wrecker, hadn't he? He had that scope for a face and those vicious claws, didn't he? The orange mecha rested their chin in one of their hands and tilted their helm.

"My designation is Rung, of The Pious Pools, he/him/his." The glyph he used for his designation was old fashioned, rough and pronounced archaically. Whirl took a moment to wonder how he'd ended up on a ship full of mechen with identical pronouns. Had 'he' pronouns been required for entrance or something? "I should have introduced myself when you came in but," he made a curious gesture over his helm, like the spinning of rotor blades. "I skipped over it. Sorry." [[crack his optics in]]

Whirl ignored him.

He concentrated instead on filtering his fuel: bare essentials with cloying additives. Medical-grade without the filtration. This was the kind of fuel to intake fast and be done with. Not that he had much of a palette to offend anymore. He stood, still pointedly ignoring the other mecha, and retrieved a third cube from the dispenser. He didn't bother returning to his chair this time, downed his fuel quickly in front of the wall, staring at the machine's numerical pad. As he retrieved his fourth cube- still not nearly enough to quiet those obnoxious low-fuel alerts- he stole a glance back to the table. The other mecha still hadn't picked up his datapad.

"What?" If he was angling for an apology, he wasn't getting one. What did he expect, hovering over a damaged mecha that had just been denied a killing blow? Not a bright move, specs. What had he wanted? Hadn't Ratchet told him he was better off scrapped?

"May I ask your designation?" he asked.

"Whirl. Polyhex. He," the rotary replied, in a clipped tone and impersonal glyphs. He was probably about to report him for something. Great. Whirl hadn't even noticed doing anything worthy of high command's reprimand in the few minutes he'd been in the room. He'd tried half-sparkedly to kill him, but that was ages ago. Speaking of which… "Would anyone miss this little twerp if I just shot him out an airlock?"

Rung laughed. Whirl realised, belatedly, that he had asked that question aloud.

"No," he said, voice too light for the meaning of his glyphs. "No, I can't say they would." He lifted his helm from where it had been resting in his hand, fixed his gaze on the rotary.

Whirl was used to being the mecha who cornered the market on creepy staring. Usually through his own intention: the single optic really messed with some mechen's processors, especially if he could crank it bright enough. But what Whirl had learned theatrically Rung seemed to be accomplishing through purely natural talent. His face was blank and still and his scopes shone bright and eerie.

"Whirl. He," he repeated, his glyphs precise and laborious recreations of Whirl's own. "Whirl." His optics went slightly dim, a clear indicator that he was combing his internal databanks for information. [[stop him]]

"Listen, Eyebrows," Whirl started, pointedly bypassing his designation. No need to make him think they were getting friendly. Rung's optics flashed as he was diverted from his search.

"Yes, Whirl?"

"You a NAIL?"

"No. I work- worked, among the Autobot ranks."

"Then why would you have to look me up?" he asked, voice low with implied threat. Yeah, thats right, I may be glitched but I know exactly what you were just doing.

"I was checking to see if you were on the list of my possible clients. I haven't got all of the data transferred into immediate retrieval yet." He rolled his shoulder slightly, made another strange motion with his hand. "Unfortunately, there are only five of us on board, and the war has left many in need of our services, so our pools of potential clientele are large."

Great, Whirl thought, I'm talking to a Psy-Ops here. A fragging helm-needler. The last kind of mecha he wanted to be stuck with right now. Alright, time to whip out the big guns.

Since Eyebrows apparently wasn't intimidated by the literal big guns, Whirl would have to go with one of his less favored methods for harassing his way into some peace and quiet. He swaggered away from the wall with a practiced air of confidence, settled back in his chair and put his fuel mechen might be so wrapped up in acting 'non-judgemental' that they'd pretend not to mind a short-circuited empuratee sharing a room with them, but every mecha minded a short-circuited empuratee hitting on them.

"Ooo," he cooed, pitching his voice to emphasize the warbling warp of a vocaliser filtered through the unnatural anatomy of a mutilated helm. "I didn't know Roddy hired pleasure-mechen for this cruise." He fixed his optic in his best leer, glancing pointedly at the other mecha's dextrous looking fingers. "Please tell me you know how to work a flight stabilizer, because it's been forever since I've had a nice pair of hands on them." Rung stared at him, tilted his helm, showed absolutely no appreciation for the grand show Whirl was currently putting on for his benefit.

"Apologies," he said, "my phrasing was unclear. The class of mechen I was referring to was that of psychology specialists." He smiled and gave a small shrug. "Actually, I'm unaware if there are interfacing specialists currently aboard. I could certainly inquire for you, if you would like. I'm not sure if they are classified as artisans or medics…" the mecha trailed off, seemed to be giving the matter serious attention. "In any case, you do not appear on my list."

Well, that had backfired. Okay, what about oversensitive short-circuited empuratee?

"So, you think I'm glitched, do you?" he snapped, optic narrowing. Rung frowned, sympathetic but not cowed.

"I assure you, I only checked as a matter of protocol. It is necessary that I do not assume the circuit type of any of the mechen onboard, and that I-"

"Well, I am!" Whirl declared, struck by a sudden fear that that last line might have made the doctor cross 'short-circuited' off the list of Whirl's most unappealing characteristics. "Very glitched. Short-circuited to the point where Ultra Magnus himself says I gotta talk to someone about it or get thrown out the airlock!"

"I should hope he would know better than to use such language," Rung said, frown deepening. "Whirl, if you wish to report an abusive environment, I can–" He was finally sounding worried, but not enough and not about the right thing.

"So, you know who the lucky mecha who does get to deal with all this twisted circuitry is?" He blurted out before the smaller mechen could suggest something ludicrous like filing a report just because he'd somehow managed to get every Cybertronian alive to prefer him dead.

"...I don't know who your primary care provider will be at the moment, just that I've been ruled out, bu-"

"Ruled out?" Whirl curved his optic in what he hoped would read as derision and gestured at his helm with his talons. "You're not good enough to handle all this?"

Rung's optics flickered again. "Medics have specialties," he explained. "Some of us are better suited to tackle certain subjects. There are some topics which I cannot objectively, professionally address due to my own psychological makeup." Primus. Okay antique, lets try this again. Short-circuited empuratee hitting on you, this time explicit and persistent.

"What I'm hearing," he sneered, "is that you have a raging empuratee fetish, and if they let me into your office you'd just frag the scrap outta me."

Rung's reaction was limited to a small downward twitch at the corner of his mouth. "Personal relationships, as well as interfacing, between counselors and clients is deeply unethical and inherently abusive. I should hope that any medic who would commit such a crime would not be permitted on board." Primus now he sounded worried again. Worried for him.

"So the fetish thing is still in play, then?" He was having trouble taking the high whistle of panic out of his voxcoder. Why wasn't he disgusted right now, why wasn't he offended? Why wasn't he leaving? "Sounds like you want to 'face me so bad that you talked all of your buddies into taking on this mess just so you could have me all to yourself?" His laugh sounded strained, even to his own audials. "Good. I like a mecha who goes for what they want."

"I actually find the fetishization of disabilities to be... distasteful." How and why was he taking him seriously right now? "Even if I had such a proclivity, it's been a mere cycle since we took off. A cycle I primarily spent in mortal terror for my life. When would I have had time to request such an arrangement?" Was that a joke? He sounded amused. Okay, Whirl was going to have to be way more straightforward.

"You know Doc, you haven't said you aren't interested in swapping charge with me."

"No, I haven't," Rung said, and he was definitely amused right there. "Is there a reason you think I wouldn't be?"

Whirl just stared at him.

The mecha's bizarre reactions to his behavior already had him thrown for a loop, but that little comment really sent him reeling. Why wouldn't hewant to swap charge with him? Like it wasn't obvious? Like it didn't make sense? He could get if the antique was too old fashioned, maybe even too naive, to get what he was implying. He could get if he just expressed fear and disgust in weird ways. He could even wrap his helm, albeit with some difficulty, around the idea that he was just entirely unphased by interfacing and violence. But what in the Pit was- he couldn't be serious... Rung continued gazing in his general direction, something almost reminiscent of a smirk on his lips.

[[call his bluff]]

"Ooo, Doc," he laughed, vocals high and reedy. "If you keep talking like that, I just might have to ask you out. How about we meet up back here next refueling time and talk. Just you and me." That got a reaction, but not the one he was expecting. Rung's antennae perked up and his optics flashed. His pseudo-smirk blossomed into a genuine smile and frag that was actually really cute, oh no.

"Oh!" he exclaimed, emitting a small beep. For the first time since they'd started speaking, he seemed at a loss for glyphs. He glanced down at his hands, fiddling his fingers. Primus... was he flattered? Whirl knew the mecha couldn't have been a big deal- the fact that all Whirl got threatened with for almost offlining him was jail time showed that much was true- but surely he respected himself enough that he wouldn't- "I- I'm not sure about a date, but I would certainly enjoy talking again."

Adaptus' cog. Who let this mecha be a psych specialist when he quite clearly had clinically dismal self esteem? Whirl didn't even know what to say. He just sat there. Defeated. After another moment of silent fidgeting, the mecha trilled surprise. He stood abruptly, smiling and bowing in apology.

"I have a meeting I must attend." Ok, well, at least he had the decency to bolt the second he realised what he had just agreed to. "But I look forward to seeing you again later in the cycle. Perhaps, if it goes well, we might call it date after all." Whirl watched Rung subspace his tablet and leave, optic wide in puzzled disbelief.

Unicron's rusted connector, what had he gotten himself into?


End file.
